Anna Raccoon Archives

Post navigation

The 25 Hour News and Dead Ed: An Obituary

The Anna Raccoon Archives

by Petunia Winegum on May 9, 2015

Ed Miliband is a Bill Wyman solo album. William’s dubious personal peccadilloes aside, in terms of doing his job, he was the kind of guy you’d want in the background – quiet, unassuming, steady and dependable. While the eyes of the audience were fixed on the visual and musical flamboyance of Mick and Keith, Bill was there, working in harmonious tandem with Charlie Watts to keep the rhythm section solid. Nobody would ever countenance Wyman moving upfront. He wasn’t made for that role and, bar one fluke hit single, his extracurricular outings on disc would hardly interest anyone but the most diehard Stones anorak.

When that exit poll result came through on Thursday night, not even the most committed Conservative could have anticipated what it had to say. The pre-election pollsters have got it wrong before, of course; 1992 springs to mind. But go back even further than that. On the eve of the 1970 General Election, Harold Wilson had been PM for almost six years and the polls and pundits unanimously predicted an easy Labour victory. Ted Heath’s shock win, facing an extremely popular Labour leader against whom few gave Heath a chance, was perhaps far more impressive than any enjoyed by Thatcher or Blair versus a succession of opposition lame ducks; but what of the lame duck David Cameron was confronted by?

Right from the off, I didn’t believe a single Miliband cheerleader when they expressed their confidence in Miliband’s leadership; their eyes transmitted hapless hope rather than assured conviction. Every single one of them reminded me of a child denying he’d smashed a window with his football, despite evidence to the contrary. You just knew they were bullshitting because they had to; they were lumbered with him. A flawed leadership election system gave them the wrong brother and there was nothing they could do about it. Miliband had five whole years to repair the damage of 2010 and make his party electable again, yet as the past half-decade progressed it never once looked like he was capable of doing so.

On a superficial level that nevertheless counts for a lot in this day and age, there was that silly voice; there was that odd face; there was the geeky nerdishness and resemblance to Wallace and Mr Bean; there was the bacon sandwich and the little kitchen; there was the five commandments set in stone; there was the utter absence of belief in anyone who saw Miliband in action that he could ever stand on the doorstep of Downing Street. A minor member of a cabinet, heading a nondescript department, should have been his destiny; as a frontman, he never stood a chance – yet only Ed himself seemed unable to see what to the rest of the country was blatantly obvious.

Personally, I don’t find David Cameron much more appealing a leader than Miliband; but just look at who Cameron’s opposition opponents have been in the two General Elections he’s fought – two of the most inept Labour leaders ever to head their party. Similarly, who did Tony Blair take on – Major, Hague and Howard. Ditto Thatcher – Callaghan, Foot and Kinnock. Luck counts for a hell of a lot in politics.

Who a party leader surrounds him or herself with also speaks volumes as to his or her judgement, and a glance at the personnel of the shadow cabinet of the past five years sums up another aspect of Miliband’s cluelessness. They ranged from old hands such as the perennially patronising Harriet Harperson to a substance-free poster-boy such as Tristram Rhyming-Slang. And then there’s Ed Balls; and Yvette Cooper; and Douglas Alexander; and well…say no more. I wouldn’t want any of that lot in my house, let alone running the country.

Even more than Labour’s failure to convince the English electorate, their obliteration in Scotland has been nothing short of apocalyptic for the party; they’ve now undergone what the Tories endured in 1997, yet whilst the decline and fall of Conservatism north of the border was a gradual process, accelerating under Thatcher, Labour’s Caledonian collapse has been as swift as it has been unprecedented. Apply a blade to the flesh of the Labour Party and the blood would be tartan; its first leader was a Scotsman and Scotland has always been loyal to Labour, even through eighteen years of Tory dominance in the 80s and 90s. Perhaps that sense of detachment from the rest of the UK fostered the belief Scotland would be better off going it alone, something the SNP has capitalised on in a truly remarkable fashion since taking control of the Scottish Parliament.

Yes, it’s true that a large share of the blame for the implosion of the Labour party can be attributed to Miliband; but the disaster can also be blamed on Labour’s increasing detachment from the man in the street, something that began under Blair when his huge majorities made him believe he didn’t have to consider the opinions of Joe Public anymore. What UKIP in England and the SNP in Scotland have done so successfully is to move into the ground Labour felt they didn’t need to sully their hands with; and they may never regain that ground as a consequence. The party has been here before – 1979, ’83, ’87 and ’92; but back then they only had to worry about taking on the Tories. The task is far greater today, even if the party tries to exploit the dramatic decimation of the Liberal Democrats as it attempts a long and drawn-out rebuilding process.

The reliance on focus groups, the input of special advisers, the fear and lack of interest in addressing the electorate on a market-square soapbox or public meeting in favour of stage-managed rallies for the benefit of the party activists, the rock star-like employment of minders and bouncers to protect the leader from coming into contact with Real People – all have shown the suicidal contempt the Labour party has for everyone other than its diminishing party faithful. Labour has retreated into preaching to the converted, like a band that used to sell-out stadiums and top the charts reduced to small gigs for fan club members and settling for one week at No.36 as success.

A strong opposition can make for a strong democracy; if the Tories are in power, I want them to be challenged and harried; if Labour are in power, ditto. The Coalition Government has suffered moments of intense unpopularity since 2010, yet none of that has translated into widespread support for Labour. The party has struggled to establish a lead in the polls over the last five years and Miliband has never won the confidence of the electorate in that time. Rumours of a coup two or three years back amounted to nothing, but it’s not as though there was an obvious contender ready to seize power. The front bench of the Labour Party is a collection of has-beens, never-were’s and mediocrities that never realistically stood a cat in hell’s chance of becoming a government, regardless of what the polls said before May 7; and I think most of us knew that all along. If any member of that Labour front-bench had an ounce of honesty in their bones, they’d admit they knew it too.

Ed Miliband, born 24 December 1969; died, May 7 2015. He leaves behind a smug clique of elitist arseholes.

The phenomenal growth of the SNP demonstrates that it is still possible to establish ‘tribal voting’ amongst the hard-of-thinking, but you need to give the ‘tribe’ a simple message, so they don’t look too hard behind the slogans and headlines to discover the shabby underpinnings and lack of substance. The ‘fish-folk’, Salmond and Sturgeon, managed that process brilliantly. The challenge for ‘Next Labour’ is to find a simple sloganised message for the masses and stop trying to be too metropolitan-clever about it – but it may be too late, that party may be in the irrecoverable death-throes now.

Labour will rally round and be back. I didn’t mind Red Ed as a person , but some of his policies were crap. The climate change act for one has cost us billions. He was going to enact a de carbonisation act which would have ment that by 2030 all energy would have to come from non fossil sources is no oil, gas, petrol , diesel. As I can’t afford an electric car , I would be stuck without transport other than to occasional electric bus if the wind was blowing enough to charge the batteries. I would be sat at home dreaming about when I used to be able to put the gas fire and central heating on. I wouldn’t be able to complain much either as the electric wouldn’t be strong enough to power my computer or phone. Days would be spent singing and idolising Chairman Ed, the leader who gave us this modern world. A [email protected] lucky escape!

AdrianS seems unaware that oil and gas are finite resources, that discovery rates peaked a few decades ago, and that exploitation of Canadian oil sands and US shale fracking despite their high cost and low EROEI is an indicator that global production rates will also soon decline as more and more fields become depleted. Having enjoyed the benefits of North Sea oil and gas since the 1980s, Britain is now back in the position of having to pay for energy, and the bill will get larger every year as the North Sea produces less and less. Energy policy in Britain is shambolic – regardless of opinion on climate change we have to develop alternative energy sources, and quickly, because fossil fuel energy availability in 2030 is likely to be far less than it is now (caveat – there’s still plenty of coal – but that isn’t as useful and is far more polluting).

Don’t think you know what you are talking about when it comes to politics in Scotland. The tribal vote has, thankfully, gone as for as Labour is concerned. What happened was that after 50 years, and more, of giving Labour our votes is that we have finally come to the conclusion that they A – didn’t care about us as long the got the votes B – wouldn’t change anything. They need an electorate in the shit who think they are the answer.

Eventually the idiots in England who vote Labour will come to the same conclusion and then Labour will be finished.

I didn’t predict the result. Like most of our readers when we had our guessing game the other week, I went for a minority Tory “win”. But I suppose you can say with 20-20 hindsight it was quite likely. Like our landlord, I am not a particular fan of “Call Me Dave”. I suspect his Parliamentary nickname of “Flashman” is well earned. Nor do I believe the “We’re all in this together” bollocks. But, I suspect that whilst a portion of the electorate prefers to deny voting for the “nasty” party, a significant tranche of Middle England looks at The Milipede, Ed Balls, Russell Grant and that bloody ridiculous stone thing and the monstrous Strurgeon and thought: Nah. No way. Meanwhile, I was most entertained by the fall out and bloodbath. My facourite Tweet just said: “#EdBalls. Dead. #Milipede. Dead. #Lib Dems. Nearly All dead. #Massacre.” Seemed to sum it up quite well.

There’s an interesting sub-analysis which has not yet been made. In the London area, Labour actually did quite well – but UKIP did very badly there. In the rest of England, Labour did badly, but UKIP did quite well, harvesting lots of votes and second-places. The difference is stark. Despite the common perception that UKIP would damage the Conservatives, it appears that they inflicted the greatest damage on Labour by collecting potential white, working-class votes, many from previous non-voters, which should be normal Labour territory.

Responding to that analysis could have quite an impact of ‘Next labour’ policy – what price the party returns, before the promised referendum, to the old Michael Foot policy of leaving the EU ? That would directly parallel the SNP growth – start with a simple tribal ‘independence’ message, then convert that into committed party voters – it’s worked across Hadrian’s Wall, so why not in their post-industrial heartlands further south ? (Maybe I should offer to chisel their next manifesto onto the other side of that stone slab ?)

An interesting analysis, and one with which I agree with. Your points are telling. I would add that Labour have not kept abreast of political change. Ideologically it has not kept pace with the electorate which is shifting to the ‘right’ (at least south of the border). Of course, you could argue that a party which sacrifices core ideology for popularity should no longer be called the ‘Labour Party’. Indeed. But if they don’t, or can’t adapt, they may soon be calling themselves defunct. Real politicks, and the electorate, have no regard for fine political points or ideological dogma.

The “decimation” of the LibDems seems to me to merely put them back where they were 20 years ago, with a fair smattering of electoral support but unable to translate that into seats. I seem to recall they had about 8 back in Thorpe’s day. The “Conservative Party” seems to have long been the natural majority party of Britain… or should that be England because that’s where 90% of the people of Britain live. The core of the party has always been based around free trade and the principles of individual liberty and decision-making. Conservative governments seemed to blunder into big Statism because of their historical fondness for Empire and the wars that Empire forces upon the Imperial Power. The Socialist Party then gained a foothold in British politics because the existence of a huge State. The fact that Blair then used his gaining of control over the big State to pursue an endless moral-imperial war policy seem to demonstrate what a danger a big State is, in every way. People don’t start wars, governments do.

The other aspect to all this was that Blair abandoning a core socialist principle (Clause 4) gave him the ability to fool the people that socialism was dead, but he also swept into power on the back of a huge media sex scandal campaign against the pervert Establishment. It might have worked a second time; but since Miliband was explicitly shoe-horned into power by the hard-core socialists in the unions and the champagne variety to explicitly make the Party socialist again, the trick was akin to Tommy Cooper who in shambling style, Mili perhaps always resembled. Socialism might be dead but it’s a powerful Zombie nonetheless. Labour is a party without a cause.

@moor “[Blair]..also swept into power on the back of a huge media sex scandal campaign against the pervert Establishment.” Indeed it did. The North Wales saga had been relentlessly promoted by the left-leaning broadsheets for several years and Waterhouse had just been established ‘to get to the bottom’ of the ring rumours though of course it had already gone nationwide. Of course it was the Tories who had been in power for nigh on two decades who were the target . It was the build-up in early 1997 that persuaded myself and fellow journalists David Hebditch and Nick Anning to publish the suppressed Jet report demolishing the satanic abuse and ring rumours in Nottingham. I can’t actually remember thinking about the timing of the buildup as being directly political at the time -and we published it at the end of May after the election – we had no political motive and were all Labour supporters at the time.

But in the light of what we’ve witnessed by way of an inflationary re-run, the political motives appear to rise to the fore.

If you read the introduction ‘We we decided to publish this’ you will see how what Moor says makes sense – not just then, but now.

No. The Liberals were the traditional party of laissez faire while the Conservatives were the economic protectionists. But these positions are almost impossible to map onto contemporary politics where even UKIP are economically liberal (there are no real conservatives since at least Thatcher). I guess that is why the current situation is described as neoliberal. The main left-right arguments are not about economic liberalism but redistribution and the size of the state.

If you look at the polls more closely, neither Labour nor the Tories moved much from their 2010 positions +/- 1%

In Scotland, the massive swings represented both a positive swing towards the SNP and against Labour and the Liberal Democrats (or Lost Deposits as they are now being called)

In England, the Tories held onto their own seats and claimed a net of 3 seats from Labour (if I recall correctly), most of their gains came from the wipe-out of the Liberal Democrats. UKIP challenged everywhere, but achieved only 1 seat, they were more of a threat to an embattled Labour than the static Tories.

In summary, the Tories didn’t “win” this election, so much as benefited from the Lib Dem route nationally and Labour in Scotland.

The vision of a coalition between Labour and Wee Jimmy Krankie and her army of deranged porridge wogs* was all that was needed to prevent that particular nightmare from coming to fruition. Sort of like having pre-deja vu. The electorate saw the possibility with horror and sustained the Tories without substantially advancing them.

Not really – If it hadn’t been for that I believe turnout would have been lower and some of those key Tory marginals would have exchanged hands. Difficult to know how much of a difference it would have made.

The number of seats captured from both Labour and the Lost Deposits in Scotland is exaggerated based upon the actual proportion of the population there (about 5% if I recall correctly).

The first-past-the-post system does have a tendency to make results somewhat lumpy, for example the 3,500,000 UKIP votes outside of the single elected MP’s constituency resulted in no further MP’s although it did diminish both Labour and to a lesser extent the Tories votes elsewhere.

To get a majority in the urban constituencies (typically Labour supporting) requires less votes than to get a majority in the rural constituencies (typically Tory supporting), this is why the boundaries commission is a critical factor for the Tories as they need these differences rebalancing to remove the inbuilt bias towards Labour.

This is one of the offerings from youtube under the search for ‘The Singing Postman’. I remember him from the olden days of my childhood. I think he probably was a postman. Not sure about the ‘singing’ bit though.

Possibly not the Singing Postman to which you refer in your comment but what the heck … at least Mr Blocked Dwarf will be able to understand it without the subtitles …

This might be a story bubbling under about voter registation. Hackney is headlining it but some folks I know locally in a rural area who voted not so long ago in some local elections, so surely were on the lists, arrived at the local Polling Station and were turned away. I know I never received a Polling card as I always have in the past, but I was on the list when I got to my local Democracy Hall.

The voting system needs a sort out and postal vote fraud squashing. This would make substantial inroads into the Labour vote. That and the boundary changes which are reckoned to be worth some 40 seats to Labour will make a difference in future. Hopefully Labour are now in a position to be finished off–esp as their support in Northern England ages and passes on.

With Labour no longer a threat the spotlight and hopefully the boot can follow for BluLabour also. How great it would be to shot of them all and see the UK once again becoming a free and truly prosperous country.

No, there’s not a conspiracy to deny people their vote, it’s just problems with the newly-introduced electoral registration system. Under the old system, one person in a household would register everyone living there; now everyone has to register themselves, as individuals. Amongst other things, it’s led to elderly people living in some care homes getting disenfranchised, because the managers couldn’t be arsed to hand out registration forms and help the old dears fill them in.

Are we to see another interminable selection process for Labour’s new leader? Concluded last time, despite all the selection pantomime, with a union appointment of Miliband Minor as party leader?

re the SNP; without the oxygen & treasure being fed to keep them home, they’d have to live in reality. Feeding off tribal memories of past injustice is one thing; without the promise of ever more Danegeld, real & metaphorical, they wouldn’t be able to indulge their dreams. The game would up.

In our world of fear and safety, the left and right of political distinctiveness becomes a twilight grey; as very few will risk any controversy of their own. Instead their sparing is to par away any excess of the other group, so all become smoothed and featureless.

Without real political distinction between the candidates, the electorate can be more easily swayed by suggestion. So who ever controls the Zeitgeist, can determine the executive of our ‘democracy’ by placing them next to pictures of kittens and puppies.

I think the professional pundits of poll reading [or should that be the witchcraft of divining] were looking too analytically at the political minutia, whilst missing the subliminal of the image makers.

My conclusion is that the country is beginning to divide, not just by political left and right, but also on grounds of conformity and contrariness regarding the images of politics, as conveyed by mainstream media; which can only add to the complexity of prediction. So we no longer believe the politicians as persons, nor the words that describe their politics.

Your ‘equality’ is my ‘exclusion’, my ‘fairness’ is your ‘quota filling’; without clear distinction between political terms, then democracy is dead… long live the mainstream media, and the puppies and kittens of the One World State.

There was some Tory or other on the wireless last night suggesting that there needs to be a devolutionary move to regionalism and he harked back to the “local Corporations” of the late Victorians and what the likes of Birmingham and Manchester achieved when “local power” was at it’s zenith. I’m not knowledgable enough to know if this power extended further than building grandiose Town Halls however, though I do recall that as achild the buses were known as the “Corpy buses” and the council houses were being built by the “Corpy builders”.

He went on to add that whilst localist projects such as mayors had failed dismally in NE England, Glasgow had emraced the concept. But then he went on to add that the problem was that the new Scottish Paliament had been arrogating centralised power again and he quoted that the Scottish Police had all been collectivised already and the regional forces disbanded.

The North-East caper was an attempt to establish EU regions and thus balkanise the area. Despite it being carried out in a heavy Labour area the Geordies told Prescott what to do with his EU stooge scheme.

Those successful ‘old corporations’, such as Manchester, Birmingham and Bradford etc. were all, at the time, some of the richest cities on the planet, forged during the Industrial Revolution and creating vast local wealth, albeit wealth for only a relatively small number of their inhabitants, all made off the sweating backs of a much larger number of their other inhabitants. But they also created philanthropists from that wealth, many of whom endowed those cities with the great works which still survive today – sadly it is only those great works which survive. All those cities are now welfare basket-cases, wholly dependent on central government funding to paper over the post-industrial cracks – it is the wealth of the South East, and more specifically Central London, which is quietly channelled to the provincial cities to make them look superficially less deprived than they really are – remember, 80% of the local council’s budget is grant from Westminster. True, most do have glossy glass & steel centres and promote their claims to prosper but, in reality, the economic fundamentals are not there any more.

Devolving greater power to those cities, without the local base to generate their own wealth, is merely shuffling the deck-chairs on the Titanic. They would still be forever reliant on ‘charity’ from elsewhere. And that’s just like Scotland – it cannot survive unless supported by the biased Barnett formula, which the SNP knows only too well, so their aim is simply to screw as much extra ‘charity’ from Westminster whilst not having to earn its own crust. It’s power without responsibility, the status of the harlot throughout history.

I’m not so sure they are as deprived as all that. The Football Industry in Manchester is the richest in the world, and Liverpool (and Everton) demonstrated the capacity is widespread in the north. Newcastle was reinvigorated and even a place like Blackburn could find a place in the sun. Cheshire is as wealthy as Chelsea/Belgravia and somebody told me recently that Berwick is rather posh too. A political party that could somehow garner the community of local pride might be what is needed rather than a party that creates envy and division on the basis that they will force one set of local interests to fund another, and then go and siphon off most of the money for their party machine and apparatchiks in the machinery of government anyway. Looking back, one does wonder if T.Dan Smith and Poulson were as bad as they painted by the mainstream media, which had the same “anti-Establishment” bias then as they do now. Perhaps it’s time to take stock of exactly wh, and what, is the real “Establishment” these days and whether the so-called Progressive war of stealing other people’s money is an idea past it’s sell-by date. Every rich man dies, and many philanthropia evolved from the death of an “evil business” – the Nobel Fund for one.

Do you mean the lovely Yvette Cooper? Shes got about as much appeal as cockroach in a Glasgow Pizza restaurant. Looks like an underfed gerbil, [email protected] knows how Balls diddles her, but then Res Ipsa Loquitor

I know why’d I voted the way I did because ,as said above somewhere ,the thought of the two fish persons getting on our backs in parliament was horrendous. I crossed my fingers very hard and hoped enough thought the same way. Now I know why the Romans went to all that trouble building Hadrian’s wall. Those dreaded Reavers were not all that nice either. So everyone on both sides built towers to retreat to in troubled times…..nice. Enough of those nasty tower building genes have survived to make a couple of fat gut scots shout invectives in a politicians face when he was peacefully going about his business. Some wise heads have regretfully rolled from vindictive voting, which is sad. Cameron’s task will not be easy, as the two fish people will be wanting promises and more kept. Should be interesting to behold.

“…a couple of fat gut scots shout invectives in a politicians face when he was peacefully going about his business. ” Shouldn’t depend on the Daily Mail for your info, dear. The politician was Jim Murphy, who has years of experience of dealing with street hecklers; particularly last year before the Referendum, when he spent 100 days preaching, sorry, speaking, in the streets of Scotland. The little bit of shouting aimed at him last week was nothing compared to the regular daily hecklings he got then. Additionally, although the meeting was unannounced anywhere, the “fat-gut scots” were waiting for him, fully equipped with megaphone & t-shirts. Some might consider that a tad suspicious. And the leader of the fat-guttted shouters, btw, is a well-known local loony with a penchant for shouting at politicians of all stripes: http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/scottish-politics/a-decade-of-disruption-a-profile-of-freelance-agitator-sean-clerkin.1430819611

I think what the Labour party came into existence to do was basically complete about a generation ago – thanks to work done by both main political parties. The gross unfairness that the working class were poorly paid, had little access to education or care in hard times and were sometimes expected to dwell in slum housing had by then basically been overcome. Some of the things Labour did for the country – setting up the NHS (actually I think it was a Liberal idea) and the Welfare State (an accumulation of measures over many years) have been sound in principle if not always sound in practice, but some were just failures – nationalisation of industry, for example (a problem now reversed).

In consequence, Labour no longer knows what it stands for. The party of the workers has been taken over by a metropolitan left-leaning cabal (as neatly illustrated by Mudplugger further up the comments), and the ‘working classes’ are pretty well ignored except as vote fodder, and some of the vote fodder are starting to realise that they’re being taken for granted. Blair ‘modernised’ the party to some effect, claiming the economic competence usually associated with the Tories, but didn’t deliver and scarpered as soon as it started to unravel. Since then, Labour have been searching for power without knowing why they want it.

Is there any way back, or will they go the way of another formerly great party, the Liberals? If they do continue to sink, what will take their place? In all honesty, I don’t know.

I’m not sure I’d go as far as ‘lies’, but it’s true that some leftist parties do invent problems to solve – climate change and ‘inequality’ being two pertinent to the current political era.

The latter – inequality being a big problem – is an useful one for them, since it can be made very convincing. However, a moments thought shows that inequality is just a fact of human existance; some people are tall, some short, some brilliant musicians, some tone deaf, some forensic thinkers, some not, some superb athletes, some rather lame. T’was ever thus, and it always will be. That reflects economically; some can look after themselves with no trouble, some need a little help, some need a lot of help. Provided those needing help get the help they need, the fact that they are ‘unequal’ to some others matters not a jot. Socialists choose not to see that, though.

Yep Engineer your right < Labour doesnt stand for real working people, just politcally correct victims. Old school working class people can get [email protected], we have much more important victims to parade. The Climate Change Act and propsed De Carbonisation legislation would have / have hit the poor the most. Likewise putting minimum wage earners jobs up for competition doesnt help the poor. Think about a simple thing such as vehicle tax– if you drive an old 2 litre car cause thats all you can afford youll pay £250 road tax. If you got loads of money and can buy a shiny new eco car you'll pay Zero road tax. Trouble is the poor cant afford the low emission cars so they get clobbered. Meanwhile Mr & Mrs well healed labour fly off to Thailand for the hols twice a year emitting god knows how much CO2 without a thought. Ive got a friend who votes green who is always in the air, so far this year Carribean, South Africa and Cambodia, talk about hypocritcal. Yet a poor person living in a council house gets clobbered for using an old 2 litre car for a few miles a year. A 60,000 lb thrust Rolls Royce jet engine emits a load more C02 over a 12,000 mile jolly than Mr two litre Vectra driven around the estate a bit. The poor get clobbered, but Red Ed's party wouldnt deal with this

Wasn’t one of the unstated policies of the Blair/Brown era the extension of dependency on benefits? Get as many people as possible on benefits of some sort whether they need it or not, and maximise state employment to build a client electorate. Every dubious benefit a poison pill for future governments. Mind you, I’m still boiling at the Tories planning to in effect tax employers about 1.25% on payroll costs. If I ran a business that’s how I’d be viewing having to provide 3 days paid leave for ”voluntary” activities.

* Wasn’t one of the unstated policies of the Blair/Brown era the extension of dependency on benefits? * Extension into Europe from what I was reading during the elction about “Tax Credit Top-ups” for the under-paid and over here. I got enmeshed in the Tax Credit fiasco. I was earning around £40k a year at the time and couldn’t quite fathom why I might be entitled to “benefits” but everyone told me I was. I thought about the fact that over the years I’d had my “Mortgage tax Relief” taken away and my “Married man’s tax relief” taken away, so despite my somewhat baffled misgivings, decided to apply after reading in the blurb that folk earning up to £60k might be entitled and I thought, why let them get it if I don’t and anyway, all I’m doing is getting back some of the tax I’m already paying them.

A complete balls-up in very way, even if Ed wasn’t the chancellor at the time. They started pumping over £300 a month into my bank account and I couldnlt sop them! You couldn’t get through on the phone and that was the way you were supposed to contact them. Anyhow, on and on it went. I put the money in an interest account and eventually, the next tax year they sent me a letter asking me for about £3k by return – and by the way I wasn’t entitled to tax Credits at all. I lied through my tetth and said sorry, I didn’t have £3k. Oh they said, how much would you like to pay per month instead? £150 I suggested. Oh dear they replied, that much? Can you afford it? Do you have any priority spending you haven’t taken into account? I should be fine I said, wondering if perhaps I should have promised £30 a month and maybe I’d be dead before it was all paid back.

It made me realise what a complete mess the welfare state must be in and the zillions that must have been lost to folk who were a bit cuter than me and had spotted a money-making opportunity, a bit lke the Compo legal firms have, stripping the NHS just now.

You’re quite right about Brown’s principle of cunningly expanding the ‘welfare’ claimant-count. By quietly collecting stealth taxes, then very noisily giving it back to millions of middle-earners in Tax Credits and the like, they created a demand to continue those benefits and, by inference, an extra Labour voting propensity. It was clever because most of those recipients did not link their increased tax-payments with less of their cash returning in benefits, they just saw the ‘public’ printed amount of benefits they got every month – it was a Party Political Broadcast on each monthly pay-slip.

The fact that the Tax Credit admin was such a cock-up shouldn’t surprise anyone – I did a long consultancy job in one of those monster government agencies and I’m more surprised that anything ever works correctly, rather than the other way round. Blinkered donkeys led by blinkered donkeys, none of whom are bright enough to realise they’re donkeys, even when you try to help them remove the blinkers.

Moor, my dear late wife had a new car for the last two years of her life, courtesy of the taxpayer, despite my considerable misgivings. Sadly later she couldn’t get in to it so we used mine anyway. She was advised of the entitlement, & was walked through the paperwork, that was easy. And why did she go for it? MP’s expenses etc. So why wouldn’t you?

You sound like I’m all Right Jack, Engineer. Things may be rosy for you but millions of people now no longer have the secure jobs, home ownership and pension plans that previous generations of blue collar workers enjoyed. Ever hear of a zero hours contract or know someone who works on one? Trade unionism might have gone too far in the seventies but now we have the opposite situation where working people have nobody to defend them. Its a dog eat dog world for many and only scraps to fight for.

Yes Henry, I know about zero hours contracts, and used in the right place for the right people, they are fine. I’ve had one, and I’m just about to embark on another. Where they are terrible is as a main source of income when your employer doesn’t want you to work too many hours. Where they are great is where you are looking for a bit of part-time work after you retired from your main job, and want the backup you get from a big organisation – insurances, facilities and so on. To be fair, those in the first group may exceed those in the second, but there is another side to this.

Henry – the ‘secure jobs, home ownership and pension plans’ won’t be provided by the welfare state. That’s were the ‘wealth generation’ side of the economy is essential, and it’s the bit the Labour party just doesn’t understand. For all their faults, at least the Conservatives do. There’s also a tendency for some politicians to promise what can’t be delivered – the typical socialist firebrand in former industrial areas shouting, “We will create jobs”. All that was done with nationalised industries in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, and it was a spectacular and very expensive failure, and nobody (even most Labour politicians) will be going there again.

Such things as universally available healthcare and the a financial safety-net available to all are now principles with which nobody disagrees, but both (even if they were as efficient as they should be) cost a lot of money, which can only come from a vibrant wealth-creating sector of the economy. Jobs subsidised by public money are not an option, because then the costs of health, welfare and work add up to more than can be raised in taxation from what is left of the private sector – that’s where we ended up in the 1970s.

If you want the secure jobs, home ownership and pension plans (all of them perfectly reasonable aspirations), support a political system that will allow such things to grow again and flourish, not a political system that just sucks wealth away from ‘ordinary’ people and makes them dependent on the State.

I just don’t buy this line that there is a huge difference between Labour and Conservatives in relation to business. Peter Mandelson famously said that Labour were extremely relaxed about people getting filthy rich and their policies since then really haven’t said otherwise. They are well to the right of where even the Conservatives were when Thatcher came to power. In most of Europe Labour would be seen as a party of the right.

Do you ever wonder where all the well paid private sector jobs went? Time was you could work hard, join a company like ICI and have a good income and a good pension. Millions and millions of those sort of jobs are gone and nothing has replaced them. The sorts of employment that has increased in recent decades (ie. a problem both parties have failed to address) are no prospects shift work in call centres and for G4S. Thatcherism, of the Tory and New Labour varieties, has failed to provide real jobs with real prospects apart from for a handful of spivs in the City.

What complete tosh. The governments of all colours have been providing jobs in the NHS, Local Government, police, law, defence (and attack), not to mention subsidising the faux- Charitable Sector by the thousands. Did the government compel ICI to provide jobs in the past? The private sector has nothing to do with “the government”, or shouldn’t do anyway. If anything is holding industry back it is Government, both national and local, with all it’s petti-fogging regulations and nimby attitudes to entrepreneurial activity. Why does the NHS rely on foreign workers, as even UKIP admitted it does? Education, education, education perhaps, or a bit more pointedly, lazy-minded young people told that they are equal to the highest in the land by “human right”, and so living off the fat of the land, and breeding on the back of welfare, with no motivation to do other than eat, drink and be merry is cool becoz ur wurf it – which might be fine for an Xmas but it isn’t going to make for a life of any sort of satisfaction in the long run or a country that is capable of getting up and doing things for itself.

By the way Henry – you accuse me of sounding like ‘I’m All Right Jack’. Well, just for yourinformation, life has kicked me in the teeth at times. However, I don’t expect politicians to solve all my problems; that’s my responsibility insofar as I’m able.

With respect (since we’re bandying insults) you sound blinkered. Look at the whole picture, not just a small corner.

Henry- isn’t a big part of the problem the availability of people prepared to work under these circumstances, whether exploitative or not? I don’t mean in terms of a failure to collectively resist, I don’t think that’s possible; I mean in terms of an almost inexhaustible supply of keen young migrants for whom conditions here are attractive enough to cross continents for. In defence of this situation, employers will moan about a lack of the right people- what they often mean is a shortage of people somebody else trained or who will work for the pay on offer. CBI anybody? There is also often weasel talk of pricing ourselves out of work; my own view in part, based on a lifetime in manufacturing here & abroad, is that cheap labour delays the adoption of new technology which can provide improved productivity & product/service quality, i.e. competitiveness. That’s my entirely instinctive view on why UK productivity is not good by some standards. Short term gains.

I read somewhere, else not the dreaded DM, that there was no one else around, but they were toe to toe. We once saw a huddled group of people waving banners out in the sticks on the road to Devizes posing in front of a video camera. When we got to our friends at Melksham, it was on tele and touted to be in some town. That was during a past election time. So one knows what goes on. It is just a pity such pictures get taken and and put in More than one paper. Very little these days is as it seems, due to manipulation and fraudulent presentation, unfortunately.

I think David Cameron owes Nicola a big thank you, her rabid anti Tory rhetoric to lock Cameron out of Downing St. even if he won more seats and votes in England woke up the English, it was the most talked about area I heard, I have never seen the polling booths so busy. She might have intended that of course as she can run against the evil Tories now in Scotland.

Yup I ended up voting “Tory” cause I didnt fancy the damage caused by Red Ed and Wee Jimmy Krankie I have previously voted Labour, but didnt fancy the money means nothing plans of Wee Jimmy Krankie and having the English, Welsh and Northern Irish subsidizing Scotland. I do care about poor people and do voluntary work for a local charity which feeds homeless and disadvantaged people

Yes, I think the Tories got their vote out whereas there was so much talk of the inevitability of a hung parliament that many people apathetic about Labour couldn’t be bothered to vote. If they had been faced with the reality of (potentially) five years of Tory majority government they might have felt more was at stake and voted.

There is so much that is wrong here I don’t know where to start. Miliband can’t be blaimed for the loss of Scotland. Everything in the piece puts events down to personality whereas the real problems for Labour are almost unresolvable. He could have saved Labour in Scotland by tacking to the left but this would have caused a revolt in a party that by and large doesn’t really disagree with most of Blair’s neo-Thatcherite economic policy. Even if he could overcome his party and have imposed a more leftwing agenda (and I don’t think he wanted that, the way he made alliances with Balls shows him as a very practical politico) he would have lost the swing English marginals that Blair was so good at getting. It really was a situation that was tragic, a circle that couldn’t be squared. The day of two big parties, one of whom that can appeal in a good day to a majority of the population is gone. It is not Miliband’s fault that he couldn’t pull off an impossible trick. And neither is it to Cameron’s credit that he squeaked home and is going to have to go though five years (of he can last that long) on a hellish majority that would make Major look strong.

I’ve got two words regarding Labour’s future – Dan Jarvis. Inexperienced, not particularly smooth in front of the cameras, but he would have wide appeal and a good back story. Ex army major, served in Kosovo, wife died of cancer, strong supporter of the NHS. I’d consider voting Labour again with him in charge, whereas the thought of David Lammy or Yvette Cooper is horrific.

I’d like to say that I was always certain the Tories would win, and I came to that conclusion at the time of the Local elections last year. Despite UKIP boasts, they miserably failed (where I am) to achieve so much as one new seat, lost one in fact as did the LibDems. If you can’t do better than that mid-term you won’t do better at the Election …and then I do not watch Television or read the papers, so confidence in my opinion was easy to maintain as I never have any confidence in the Polsters: they never ask me and even if they did, I cannot say that I wouldn’t change my mind.

I, too, am thus reminded of 1970 and Mr Heath telling Mr Day: ‘Mr Day, we are going to win tomorrow’. Then look at the dreadful record of his government, finally, leaving me (and a few others ) to be probably the last people ever to have to study by candlelight. I trust Cameron (free of Clegg and Co.) will please me more.

Totally off topic…and over the hills and far away, but I seemto recall someone (Gildas?) posted the original of that photo and I thought they would like to see the colorized version. There is a whole heap of recently colorized WWII photos over on vintagDOTes . It never fails to impress me how colorizing old B&W photos can ‘humanize’ things. …even something as inhumane as war.

I had what is now called a zero hours contract when I retired 3 years early, fed up with all the silliness in the NHS. It suited me down to the ground. Kept the wolf from the door when teemed up with my smaller NHS pension. It was very part time. Run very efficiently by letter in 1993 and the odd telephone call from Office of Censuses and Surveys. I was horrified when labour said smeared zero hours was to be abolished. A stroke of the pen and a handy employment niche swept away. The previous payment system was swept away too, later on in my advising career in ‘retirement’ The training for tax credits was mind blowing. We were told by our very expert supportive Insolvency practitioner, in a talk on the subject, that it captured too many into benefits, and was to be administered by Inland Revenue. A grave mistake because of difference in attitude to benefits claimants. The old benefit ran for 26 weeks and those leaving work before it ended….2 strikes and you are out would have sorted them. The IR came after overpayments very nastily. Some politicians get a wicked buzz from inventing convoluted schemes to replace perfectly sensible, easy to admin schemes. Easy to put in sanction if clients manipulated the previous scheme once too often.